If you've been craving a little more LED-action in your chess games, you'll definitely want to check out this DIY LED chess set.

Instructables user Tetranitrate had a long standing desire to create an illuminated chess board:

It all started with an idea I had many years ago.

I had just picked up a cheap-o glass chess set at my local arcade for the low low price of only 15,000 tickets. The novelty of playing with glass pieces quickly wore off, and I wondered how I could make it better. The thought of illuminating the set seemed very appealing, but there were so many different ways that could be done.

He planned out all sorts of potential methods for creating his illuminated board, but they all had significant shortcomings. Finally he decided to use LEDs and create the blue and green board seen here.

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The board is conductive, and each individual piece is outfitted with a conductive washer and an LED inside a small hollow in the base. Because the LED travels with the piece the color stays consistent, overcoming a design flaw in one of his early plans to use the board itself as illumination. Check out the video below to see it in action:

It's not a terribly complicated build as far as the raw design goes, but it is a very intricate build. Check out the full guide at Instructables to see all the details and tons of photos of the build process. Looking for a novel chess set but a bit simpler to build? Check out how to build a chess set out of nuts and bolts. If you've built your own game, chess-related or otherwise, let's hear about it in the comments.